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I’m approved to sell music right now, but Amazon has been sending me emails asking for me to send invoices for music items or I will lose most (all?) of my selling privileges in that category. All my inventory is scavenged, so I won’t be able to provide any invoices.
Last year, I sold a ton on Amazon, but with the new rules, long-term storage fees, and high return rate, I’ve been redirecting most of my efforts to eBay. I’m mostly giving up on sending “stuff” to Amazon and I’m only sending them books at this point. Amazon is just not a very friendly marketplace for scavenger sellers like myself.
I sell a lot of hats and just send them in padded poly mailers. Never had any issues or buyer complaints. If I sell a hat over $75, I’ll usually upgrade the buyer to the 7 x 7 x 6 USPS priority box.
At a garage sale, I bought a cloth zipper pouch with 3 holes punched in the side, designed to store your school pencils inside a 3 ring binder or trapper keeper. It had a big Nike Swoosh on it. I remember everyone having similar zipper pouches when I was a kid in the 90s.
I bought it for a quarter. I searched eBay and couldn’t find any sales or active listings for a vintage zipper pouch.
I put it up for $40 and it sold in a few weeks. That is probably one of my favorite sales, as I sold it at a good price on what was a total hunch on a weird, mundane item. Shoot, it couldn’t have cost more than a few dollars when new. Name brands and nostalgia sell.
As a niche seller, I will pass on this program. I don’t see many benefits to making a guarantee on shipping time.
Like all things eBay, it depends on how much work you want to do and how quickly you want to get money.
Personally, I would scan each slide individually and milk every penny I could out of them. That will probably take longer to sell, though, but you will get much higher returns. It’s rare to find a truly one-of-a-kind item that is also fairly sought after.
I’m not sure on the tape recording. If it is super personal, I would probably just destroy it. Even celebrities deserve some degree of privacy. If it is fairly benign, then you might sell it and probably be okay.
Wow. You better watch out, or that guy is going to make an eBay citizen’s arrest.
Ebay brings out lots of jerks / trolls. Here’s a weird message I received today in regards to an old 1960s trucker hat I have for sale for $60. I just ignored it and blocked him.
“I will offer you $8.50 for your hat with shipping included in that shape it’s only worth about $7.50 with shipping included but I’ll throw in an extra buck just so I don’t have to look at it every day. Thanks,Bobio”
Some people are idiots and don’t read the listing before purchasing, then expect you to “IMMEDIATELY” remedy the situation.
I hope you have a restocking fee.
That sounds like someone who has burned out on eBay and needs to find something else to do with his time. Tell him to keep his negativity to himself.
I sell a lot of used vintage electronics and rarely have a problem. I sell probably a third of my electronics items as either untested or partially tested (powers on). There is demand for old electronics and some can sell for high dollar amounts.
Every once in a while, you will have an issue where something doesn’t work correctly. It could be damaged in transit. It might be user error. If it is a heavy item and/or I don’t have much invested in it, I just give a full refund and move on. If I suspect that the buyer is trying to scam me, then I’ll pay for return shipping and try to call their bluff. In either case, it’s a price of doing business. The profit I make on the other 95% of my electronics sales more than makes up for it.
Basically, I’m saying don’t give up on electronics just because you’ve had a return or two.
I had a similar situation. I listed a trucker hat for $25 and it sold in just a few minutes. Turned out it was worth around $250.
I was tempted to cancel the sale, but decided to honor the original transaction. If it had been worth $1000 or more, then I probably would have canceled the sale. I do thousands in sales a month, and 90% of the time I’m the one getting something for a dollar or two when it is worth 50 times as much. It is not worth the negative feedback and risking future sales for only $200 additional profit. If it had cost me a $1000 or more, then that’s a major error and I would feel compelled to cancel it.
On the bright side, that error made me realize that trucker hats could be worth much more than I originally realized. Since that time, I have doubled down on trucker hats and that category is now one of my biggest seller.
Update: I won. Well, technically, the buyer cancelled the case.
During its investigation, PayPal requested additional information on the transaction from the buyer, probably to verify his bogus story that he works at the international freight forwarding company where the item was delivered.
Of course, this could just be a temporary victory. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a credit card chargeback in the next few days. Hopefully, I’m more trouble than it’s worth and he will move on to an easier target to scam.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback. I probably could learn a lot from listing these, although I don’t really run into paper currency very often, so I’m not sure how often that knowledge would be useful. I do like the idea of tiered commission.
I’ve been amateur “appraising” items in the estate using my ebay app looking at sold listings, but they don’t really want to just sell things to me outright. They would rather do commission on the valuable stuff, and sell the rest in an estate sale. The old paper currency does have decent value, so it might be worth my time, but most of the other stuff doesn’t. For example, there were some 1980s gold-plated eyeglass readers. I guessed they are worth around $30. I had to explain that I would buy that at an estate sale if it was a dollar or two, but I’m not interested in selling it on commission, even at 50%.
Because it is family, and several heirs will split any proceeds, it definitely makes the arrangement more stressful. I’ll probably be guilted into selling stuff for a lower commission, though.
Yeah, I checked and am able to promote everything in my store. Must be a slow rollout.
The name on the shipping address is for the owner of the freight forwarding company and it included a reference number at the end which indicated who the item was being shipped to. The buyer is located in Korea and has a different name.
Normally with eBay, I would agree and just offer a return for a refund, but my understanding of PayPal policies is that they will still require the item to be returned before issuing the refund, even if I lose the case. If they just give a refund without forcing the customer to return the item, then I should be able to call and get refunded myself. From what I have read from others scammed by this company, they will return the item, but damage it.
Anyway, I called a PayPal rep the other day when this case was opened and explained the situation of the freight forwarding, and she advised that I have a good chance to win the case.
I guess this gives me a chance to better learn the PayPal dispute process and its policies in general.
